Airport program will save a step for foreign visitors to Alamo City

Updated 8:15 pm, Wednesday, January 16, 2013

As the numbers of Mexican visitors to San Antonio soar, a new program at International Airport will allow foreign travelers to skip a trip to Dallas or Houston for time-consuming customs checks.

The Global Entry enrollment center, which U.S. Customs and Border Protection unveiled this week, will allow international visitors to stay in San Antonio for the background checks and in-person interviews required.

Previously, Dallas' D/FW and Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport hosted the closest enrollment centers for applicants who flew into San Antonio.

Once enrolled in the Global Entry program, international visitors can bypass customs lines and use self-service kiosks that feature a camera, fingerprint scanner and document reader.

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Since September, the first full month that travelers could take advantage of the kiosks, usage has grown from 245 transactions to 619 in November and 486 last month. The enrollment center is the latest addition.

The program could appeal especially to Mexican travelers.

“With Mexico in particular, we saw a definite demand for travel,” said Rich Johnson, a spokesman for the city's Aviation Department. “Mexican nationals are buying houses here, they're starting businesses here, and commuting back and forth.

“We're becoming the airport of choice for South-Central Texas to get in from Mexico.”

As of November, San Antonio International Airport had recorded more than 372,000 international passengers flying in and out of the airport in 2012 — nearly triple the number from the year before and the highest number in at least a decade.

Most of those visitors — “99.99999 percent of them,” Johnson said — are from Mexico.

Johnson said the increase in the Mexican passenger load is due to an increase in air service and cheaper airfares driven by competing airlines Aeromexico, Interjet and vivaAerobus.

The increase in visits from Mexico should continue, said Andres Muñoz, vice president of marketing and communications for the city's Conventions & Visitors Bureau.

Hoping to bolster the city's attractiveness to residents across Mexico, the CVB soon will sign a nearly $50,000 contract with the public relations and marketing firm TravelPIE, which will serve as San Antonio's “ambassador” to Mexico.

Based in Mexico City and Guadalajara, TravelPIE will work with Mexican media and travel agencies to advertise the city's shopping, leisure, medical and business opportunities.

“It's a great value,” Muñoz said. “They'll provide us 365 days a year of presence in the (Mexican) market.”

The move would underscore the contribution that affluent Mexican nationals make to the regional economy and their growing appreciation for the city as an attractive retail hub and second-home destination.

However, as airfare becomes more affordable, other demographic groups from Mexico will consider U.S. travel destinations, and TravelPIE can help CVB officials and its partners understand how to appeal to that broader customer base, Muñoz said.

“In the past ... our strategy then was different on how to market to Mexico because we focused more on a higher-end consumer,” he said. Now, he added, “there's much more demand. Our strategy needs to open to understand a broader consumer in Mexico and understand what those nuances are.”

The CVB already has started collecting information from its rising fan base on social media sites.

Nearly 20,000 Facebook users in Mexico had “liked” the Visit San Antonio page as of Jan. 9, compared to just 882 on Oct. 2.